![]() ![]() ![]() Rather than psychedelic rock, Janis preferred blues and soul. The counterculture dictum to “turn on, tune in, drop out” did not quite capture Janis’s philosophy to “get it while you can.” Rather than taking hallucinogenic drugs to expand the mind, Janis preferred taking hard drugs to numb the pain. While it is true that Janis defied gender norms, experimented with drugs, and associated with the key musical acts of the era, her goals, music, and lifestyle did not exactly square with the overall counterculture ethos, or at least, that is, how that ethos is commonly remembered. ![]() However, painting Joplin as the counterculture’s icon is slightly misguided. Biographers of Janis labeled her the “darling of the counterculture,” calling her the “first counterculture pinup girl,” and said that her “entourage and the milieu it reflected was set operative in ambiance of common beliefs and values endemic to the counterculture mentality.” Indeed, Janis’s no-holds-barred personality appeared to embody the liberated spirit and style of Sixties youth. Dying at the young age of 27, Janis’s overdose seemed symbolic of a larger death that America experienced at the end of the Sixties-the death of the counterculture. Her death was the last in a series of events that pointed to the dark side of the hippie movement: the Manson murders, the concert at Altamont, the massacre at Kent State, the passing of Jimi Hendrix. In October 1970, famed singer and performer Janis Joplin died in her hotel room of a heroin overdose. ![]()
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